HC-One, the UK’s largest care home provider of residential, nursing and dementia care, has launched a range of leading care sector benefit and reward initiatives to support Colleagues through the cost of living crisis. The initiatives include a rewards platform offering discounts on purchases and providing broader wellbeing support, and the introduction of one of the UK’s leading financial wellbeing services, whilst providing insights and tools to help plan their finances.
At the end of last year, HC-One launched its exciting new Benefits Reward Gateway, a ‘one stop shop’ for Colleagues to access all of HC-One’s company benefits and rewards. This allows those working at HC-One to be able to have easy access to recognition awards, wellbeing support and a leading discounts programme to help Colleagues save money on their shopping across a range of retailers, restaurants, cinemas and holidays – to name a few. Having only been launched last month, over two-thirds of HC-One’s Colleagues have already joined the platform.
HC-One also rolled out access to Wagestream, which provides inclusive, fair financial services. Colleagues will be able to use Wagestream to manage their budgeting, choose when they get paid, set aside money for a rainy day, get free financial coaching, pick up shopping discounts and save money on household bills - all in one smartphone app. More than a quarter of the HC-One team has already signed up to use the app.
These initiatives follow HC-One’s investment of over £17m in pay and reward in 2022, to redesign its pay structures - its largest ever investment in pay. This change has resulted in wages for Carers increasing by 11%, on average, which helped support over 70% of HC-One’s workforce to reach Foundation Living Wage during 2022. This has enabled HC-One to make great strides in the attraction and retention of talented individuals to a rewarding career in the care sector. This combined with HC-One’s learning and development programmes now gives Colleagues a clear pathway to develop, learn and grow in the sector, which has helped in retaining experienced, kind and skilled Colleagues.
As we enter 2023, HC-One is committed to continuing to develop pay and reward benefits to Colleagues working in the care sector.
John Handley, People Director at HC-One commented:
“With the cost of living rising significantly, and everyone, including our Colleagues at HC-One, feeling the impact, we have a responsibility to support each other through these challenging times, starting with making sure every penny counts. We have established a new Cost of Living working group at HC-One where Colleagues come together to share ideas and local practice to help us to understand what more as an organisation we can do to help, through these challenging times.
“We are pleased to have launched a range of great new initiatives to date and are continuing to invest in further initiatives throughout 2023 and beyond to reward, support and develop our Colleagues.”
Megan Wiseman, Client Success Director, UK at Reward Gateway said:
“The cost of living crisis is putting a huge strain on employees which is affecting both their personal and work lives. In our recent research 57% of employees in UK companies admitted that the stress from cost of living increases is negatively impacting their work. We also found that the impact of cost of living stresses is significantly reduced in workplaces that offer good or excellent financial wellbeing support. An employee discounts programme is a great way to support employees with essential costs to help make their pay go further. In 2022 Reward Gateway saw a 25% increase in usage of discount programmes year-over-year, with £6.5 Million saved on groceries alone.
“It’s really inspiring to see how committed HC-One is in really listening to and responding to employee needs and we’re really pleased we’re able to partner with the team to provide meaningful cost of living support that will make a huge difference to employees.”
Holly Reilly, Head of Client Success at Wagestream said:
“Employee wellbeing is on boardroom agendas around the UK - and many organisations could learn from the best practice being shaped by HC-One here in supporting its frontline colleagues. This is a comprehensive, industry-leading programme which caters to a broad range of wellbeing needs - from fair and flexible pay to more inclusive products and services that otherwise wouldn’t be available.”